Past Selfies

I’m tired of looking at pictures of myself from last year, or even a few years before, and thinking “damn I looked good then!” while simultaneously remembering how stressed out I was about my body, and about gaining weight, and….how I was very rarely able to just be okay with it. It’s a patten I’ve yet to get out of – medication induced weight gain leaves me feeling down about my body and I look in the mirror and want to go back to bed and hide because of it…. but next year, will I look at the pictures of me now and wish I could tell myself: dude, you’re fucking perfect, you have a body, you’re going to weigh something, you have a stomach, and a uterus, it’s a thing, chill the fuck out about it. Things I tell past me from the pictures. You looked great, why were you stressed about it?
 
Why am I stressed about it now? Besides that it’s all I really know how to be for one reason or another?
 
I’m so tired of it.
I need to figure out how to be happy as me and how I look –  however that is – and not deal with what that communicates about me to other people…..because I’m not here for that.
I don’t need to stress about looking X,Y,or Z enough to prove A or B to people, unless X,Y,or Z is going to make me feel good about being encased in skin and fabric.
 
I looked great then, when I didn’t feel it, and I wish I’d just let myself be. I didn’t then, but maybe I can now.
I don’t know what that means for me yet.
I’m stuck in a strange rut of wanting to isolate myself into oblivion and also be out and around people and taking care of myself and wearing cute things.
Mostly I want to feel good about myself again.
And I think that means I just need to let myself be.